Titans of Healthcare Pledge to Reduce Healthcare Costs!
Well with finals over and done with you can expect to get a lot more posts from me in the coming weeks! And we start out today with some very exciting news. President Obama held a press conference today for what he called, “a watershed event in the long and elusive quest for health care reform.” The American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association; PhRMA; AdvaMed; America’s Health Insurance Plans, the SEIU, and the Greater New York Hospital Association and the California Hospital Association announced a new cooperative effort to drastically reduce the rate of growth of healthcare costs beginning immediately. They pledged to cut the rate of growth by 1.5%. This may not seem like a lot but this means a cut from about 7% to 5.5%, bringing us much closer to the annual rate of income growth which tends to hover around 4-5% but which has at times grown to near 6%. And that’s what really matters, that’s really our baseline here. If healthcare costs can be reduced such that their growth is equal to the rate of income growth in the US then the future of healthcare suddenly gets a lot rosier. And this commitment brings us much closer to that goal.
And this is also great news for America’s future financial security. Many people don’t realize the huge impact that rising healthcare costs have on our country’s national budget. The reasons why that is are a subject for another article but even a savings of 1.5% will mean much smaller deficits and less national debt. One Obama aid put it this way: Continue reading
